Tommy Chong on Hey Watch This

Cheech and Chong are back. The legendary comedy duo of Tommy Chong and Cheech Marin reunited for a comedy tour. The documentary Cheech & Chong: Hey Watch This chronicles the reunion 25 years in the making.

Tommy Chong on Hey Watch This

“The Cheech & Chong brand has survived,” Chong said. “The movie Up in Smoke is still being rented and still being watched. All we did was take the brand back from the people that had it. Now, we’re enjoying the harvest.”

In 25 years, Hollywood has changed without them. Even doing a press junket for their new film has evolved. “It was a little different. We used to sit in one spot and they would bring the press in. Like the Beatles, the early Beatles press conferences. The Beatles would be up in one area. And no one had computers. Everyone had little tape recorders. Some people just didn’t have anything. They just wrote it down.”

Luckily for fans, Cheech and Chong haven’t changed much. “We have the ability to make young kids laugh. A lot of our humor, my 12-year-old daughter, at the time, she would tell me jokes and I'd translate them into our records. And, we're very juvenile.”

On the occasion of their reunion, Chong recalled how he first started the duo of Cheech & Chong. “We met in Vancouver, Canada. Cheech was up there during the Vietnam War. He was part of a secret army that was up there in case the Vietcong attacked from Alaska. I ran a topless nightclub. We had an after-hours club, and then we bought a topless nightclub. I had just converted the topless nightclub into an improvisational nightclub, with topless girls. Part of the reason was that actresses get paid a lot less than topless dancers. Once I called them an actress, then I had them. I had a couple of partners that played long-haired hippies, I had a straight guy playing a cop, and then there were the dancers. The straight guy's wife found out what he was doing and she yarded him up, and so I was looking for a straight man. This mutual friend recommended Richard. Not Cheech, it was Richard. So, I went out to this little farmhouse in Richmond, where Richard was working on an underground newspaper, and I met with him and invited him down to the club.”

Cheech made a good first impression and history was made. “He came to the club and I remember that he showed up with this gorgeous woman in a full-length mink coat. She was just stunning. And I said, ‘Well, he’s hired,’ 'cause I always judge a man by his woman. I didn't know, at the time, that she was coming to break up with Cheech. But, when I saw that, I said, ‘Oh, yeah, this guy’s got something.’ And then, Cheech watched the show and then joined the show. He was an understudy writer for the nine months that the show was up, and then my brother fired us, and Cheech and I were the only ones that still wanted to carry on, doing something. So, we formed a band. We never played a note because we did comedy instead. The next thing you know, there was just the two of us, so we came down to L.A. and the rest is history.”